Gangland news 10th august 2017

[Hailbritain]

By Jerry Capeci

Drug-Addled Luchese Associate Now A Prized FBI Stool Pigeon

Robert SpinelliGang Land Exclusive!A mob associate who helped try to kill the sister of a turncoat mob capo — an incident that arguably marked the low point in the history of the American Mafia — is now the government's key witness in a major new racketeering indictment against his old gangster cronies, Gang Land has learned.

Robert Spinelli was one of five mob hoods who stalked a Brooklyn mother of three for weeks before ambushing her as she returned from dropping two of her kids at school. The failed 1992 hit was a brazen effort to convince the woman's brother not to take the witness stand against now imprisoned-for-life Luchese boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso.

Today, it's Spinelli who is a much-prized federal witness, and his undercover work, sources say, was crucial to the blockbuster indictment of 19 Luchese gangsters on May 31. Among those charged in the case are the crime family's top three mobsters, and one of their sons, who are accused of a slew of racketeering charges, including the murder of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish.

Steven Crea Jr.Sources say Spinelli, 54, began cooperating with the FBI in 2012, five years after his release from prison for taking part in the March 10, 1992 shooting of the sister of turncoat capo Peter (Fat Pete) Chiodo in front of her Gravesend, Brooklyn home two months before Amuso's trial began. The woman, Patricia Capozzalo, was shot twice, hit in the back and neck, but survived.

Spinelli, the sources say, tape recorded hundreds of conversations with many defendants in the case, including Steven (Stevie Junior) Crea Jr., who along with his father, underboss Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea Sr., and acting "street boss" Matthew (Matty) Madonna, is charged with ordering the November 2013 gangland-style slaying of Meldish.

At a bail hearing for Crea Jr. in June, assistant U.S. attorney Scott Hartman said the government has a witness "who will testify, based on firsthand knowledge that Crea was personally involved in planning the murder of Meldish" because he "was viewed as being a liability to the family."

Michael SpinelliThe prosecutor didn't identify the witness, but sources say the turncoat is Spinelli, who was convicted in 1998 of racketeering and attempted murder in the Capozzalo shooting. Spinelli was sentenced to 10 years in prison for driving a "switch car" that picked up the two-man hit team after they ditched the van they used in the shooting and drove them to safety.

The hit team included Spinelli's older brother, Luchese soldier Michael (Baldy Mike) Spinelli, and mob associate Dino Basciano, the triggerman who agreed to cooperate with the FBI after a 1994 arrest and was the key prosecution witness at the trial of the Spinelli brothers in Brooklyn Federal Court.

At the time, the attempted murder of an innocent family member — a mother of small children — shocked even those who had long pursued the mob.

"This case marks an extraordinary low point in the violent history of organized crime," stated trial Judge Raymond Dearie, a former United States attorney, in a decision that upheld their convictions. At Baldy Mike Spinelli's sentencing, Dearie said that the attempted murder of Capozzalo was not only "an unthinkable act of cowardice" that broke one of the Mafia "rules that just aren't broken" but was a "black indelible mark (on the Luchese family) that will never be washed away." Sentenced to 19 years, seven months, Baldy Mike, 63, will be behind bars until 2029.

Steven Crea Sr.In his written ruling, Dearie wrote that the Luchese family was "desperate to stop Chiodo" from testifying against Amuso and put together a hit team — it included mobster Jody Calabrese, who took a 10-year plea deal, and Gregory Cappello, who died of cancer — "to murder his sister" but the plan failed, even though Capozzalo was shot twice.

If the would-be killers had succeeded, Chiodo, who testified at Amuso's trial and helped sink him, would have been even more eager and determined to testify against his former boss, he told more than one former FBI agent who kept in touch with him over the years. Fat Pete, who survived 12 gunshot wounds in 1991, died of natural causes last year at age 65.

At Crea Jr.'s bail hearing, prosecutor Hartman, in an ironic twist, cited the Capozzalo shooting and the attempted murder a year earlier of Chiodo as evidence that Luchese mobsters are violent gangsters who are wont to assault cooperating witnesses and should be detained without bail.

Peter Chiodo"This is an organization that, by its nature and by its history, poses a threat to witnesses," said Hartman, noting that "the Luchese Family famously tried to kill a witness, Pete Chiodo, back in the early '90s, by shooting him multiple times. They attempted to kill not only Mr. Chiodo, but also his sister, to deter him from cooperating."

The prosecutor never mentioned that his witness against Stevie Junior was a key player in the Capozzalo shooting.

Hartman did say that the 45-year-old Crea Jr., despite having no prior arrests, is a dyed in the wool mobster and a powerful family captain who supervised two crew members, soldier Christopher Londonio and associate Terrence Caldwell in the execution murder of Meldish.

In asking Magistrate Paul Davison to detain Stevie Junior without bail, the prosecutor stated that the government also had evidence that Crea Jr. had supervised a plot to kill a Bonanno associate named Carl Alsheimer who had dissed Crea's father during a dispute in early 2012 at a Luchese family social club on Coddington Avenue in the Bronx.

Paul CassanoAlsheimer, according to Hartman, refused to let Stevie Wonder Crea into the club when the longtime underboss arrived there during a dustup with Bonanno family members who had barged into the club.

The prosecutor said the government has a witness, who is also believed to be Spinelli, "who was there who would testify that Crea's father told Alsheimer, 'I will remember your face.'"

As a result, Hartman said, Crea Jr. sent soldier Paul (Paulie Roast Beef) Cassano and associate Victor Bruno to kill Alsheimer. The duo was unable to locate their intended victim, and the Bonanno-Luchese feud was subsequently resolved, the prosecutor said, but Stevie Junior's actions established that he was a danger to the community and should be detained.

Davison agreed. His ruling was upheld by White Plains Judge Cathy Seibel following a hearing last month.

Vittorio AmusoSources say that Spinelli, a drug abuser for many years, served as a messenger for the 82-year-old Amuso, who is serving his life sentence these days in Cumberland, Maryland. As a result, the drug addled gangster was able to hobnob with mobsters and associates at the family's Bronx social club and in Westchester, where many Lucheses reside.

Spinelli began abusing drugs when he was a teenager and was convicted and served four years for drug dealing in the 1980s. His mob stock was so low in the early 1990s that he wasn't even considered a lowly mob associate, according to testimony at the Spinelli brothers' trial.

When Robert showed up with his brother at a family Christmas party or other gatherings, turncoat soldier Frank Gioia Jr. testified that wiseguys wouldn't even use the low salutation — "a friend of mine" — when they introduced him to someone.

"This is Mike's brother," they would say, Gioia testified.

Mob-Linked Union Official Says He's A Labor Racketeer

Roland BedwellA mob-connected union leader who boasted of his ties to Gambino family mobsters while shaking down contractors copped a plea deal to extortion charges this week rather than have prosecutors air some remarkably frank tapes about his Mafia dealings at trial in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Roland Bedwell, 57, a business agent for Local 175 of the United Plant and Production Workers, an independent union that represents asphalt workers and landscapers, pleaded guilty to a four-year-long shakedown of a contractor who tape-recorded him talking about his close ties to father and son wiseguys Salvatore and Anthony Franco.

Technically, Bedwell faces up to 20 years behind bars when he is sentenced later this year by Judge Nicholas Garaufis. But his plea deal recommends a prison term between 51 and 63 months.

According to court filings by prosecutors Andrey Spector and Nicholas Moscow, Bedwell was caught on tape telling a wired-up contractor that Anthony Franco, an administrator of Local 175's benefit funds, is the "key figure" in the small independent union. "Anthony Franco takes care of all the problems," Bedwell was heard telling the extortion victim. The shakedown of the contractor, identified only as John Doe #2, began in January of 2013 and ended in May of this year.

Judge Nicholas GaraufisOn June 3, 2013, prosecutors said, Bedwell invoked both Anthony Franco, 55, then a family associate who was later inducted into the Gambino family, and his father, family capo Salvatore Franco, 82, in "his effort to extort John Doe #2."

But the prosecutors stressed that Anthony's clout derived from his father Salvatore, a powerful Gambino family capo who is described on the tapes as someone who doesn't take "no" for an answer.

The tale told by the tapes make a telling chapter in the story of how the mob operates in the current era.

Bedwell told the contractor that he had only entered "the asphalt business" at Salvatore Franco's direction. That order from the boss came after Franco had a 20-minute conversation in Italian with the defendant's Italian-speaking mother, wrote Spector and Moscow. "Previously, the defendant asserted, he was just 'doing numbers' and 'doing collections,'" they wrote.

Anthony FrancoIt was a nice bump up the mob ladder. In his talk with John Doe #2, Bedwell recounted how he had gravitated from a bookmaker hustling for bets on the corner into a labor union official earning $190,000 a year.

On tape, Bedwell told the story to the contractor this way:

"One day, this car pulls up twelve o'clock at night. My partner comes in, says, 'There's somebody outside wants to see you.' I said, 'tell him I don't have time.' He said, 'uh, I don't think you're gonna tell (him that. You're) gonna see this guy. Who the fuck could this be? Sal Franco. 'Hey Sal, how are you?' Slaps me in the face."

Franco then took him to his mother's house. "I knew I was in trouble. Said this ain't good. Takes me out by the ear. I said, 'What's with the ear thing?' Gets me into the house. So anyway, they have a discussion in the native tongue, whatever the fuck they're talking about. They talked about 20 minutes. He comes around, he looks at me and says, 'Monday morning you go to East 1st and Houston Street. You're going in the asphalt business. You're no longer on the corner."

Salvatore FrancoThe feds apparently had the union official so dead to rights that, in an unusual aspect of his plea agreement, Bedwell agreed to be sentenced as if he had also pleaded guilty to threatening and conspiring to extort another contractor in November of 2013. That was when Anthony Franco accompanied him to a jobsite and Bedwell, according to prosecutors, "sought to invoke the fire of mob violence to bully his victims into hiring his union."

All told, Bedwell's plea deal covers him for a total of four extortions, including one in November of 2011 when he allegedly assaulted a rival union official at a Bronx job site and one last year when his goons blocked trucks of another contractor whose workers Bedwell wanted to join Local 175.

There were no high fives or fist bumps in the back of the courtroom during Bedwell's guilty plea. But there were smiles all around among the agents who had put together the hard-to-make labor racketeering case and were sitting there — FBI agent Paul Harris and Department of Labor agents Maureen Buoneto and Ed Nesbitt.

Birdy Duke Flies The Coop

Bertram DukeHe faced life in prison when he was jailed last year as part of an unusual plot by Genovese gangsters and Crips gangstas to whack a mob associate. But the aptly nick-named Bertram (Birdy) Duke flew away free last week after receiving a "time served" sentence for his role in the case.

In sentencing Duke, Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Swain ignored the arguments by prosecutor Samson Enzer that the 49-year-old Duke, who has multiple past convictions, deserved a prison term of up to 27 months for the "serious crime" of "trying to help others get away with a murder plot." Instead, Swain imposed the lesser sentence recommended by probation officials in their Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) to the Court.

Enzer's argument was that Duke should get the full sentence under the guidelines since he has an armed robbery conviction and several other arrests on his rap sheet. That kind of prison time, Enzer wrote, would help "deter him (and others like him) from continuing to break the law." It was "obvious," Enzer added, "that prior punishments have not been severe enough" to keep Duke on the straight and narrow.

Judge Laura SwainDuke pleaded guilty two months ago to minor misprision of a felony charges — not reporting a crime to authorities — that carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison. His plea agreement set his sentencing guidelines at 21-to-27 months but permitted Birdy to seek a lesser prison term.

Prior to his guilty plea, the feds had presented Duke as a much bigger player in various schemes. He was implicated, but not charged, in the illegal sports gambling business of billionaire playboy art dealer Hillel (Helly) Nahmad, for whom Duke worked as a chauffeur. Birdy was also initially charged with murder conspiracy in the 2014 plot to whack Genovese mob associate Joseph Bonelli. But prosecutors subsequently conceded they only had evidence that Duke learned about the plot after it fizzled badly.

But for more than a year after detectives nabbed three Crips gangstas and Duke's older brother Kelvin as they drove to Queens to kill Bonelli, Birdy Duke supplied Kelvin with cash and helped him elude FBI agents who were looking for him following his release from state custody. Since then, however, Kelvin Duke has agreed to cooperate with the feds and is expected to be a key witness against other defendants when the case goes to trial.

Hillel NahmadDuke's lawyer, Aaron Goldsmith, who said he was going to request a "time served" sentence for his client when he pleaded guilty in June, cited the PSR recommendation and argued that Duke's prior crimes were "old," and that his criminal actions in 2014 and 2015 were a "misguided sense of family obligation" to his older brother.

Goldsmith conceded that Duke's "extreme error in judgment in agreeing to help his brother remain a fugitive" was a crime, but argued that the recommended guidelines were "quite significant, especially considering Mr. Duke's limited role" in the overall murder plot.

Judge Swain agreed with Goldsmith, and probation officials. The Judge also gave Duke a year of strict post-incarceration supervised release, and in an apparent effort to coerce him to steer clear of any illegal temptations, ordered him to undergo 24-hour-a day GPS monitoring for the next five months.

The hit team of three Crips gangstas have all pleaded guilty and been sentenced to double digit prison terms. Four reputed Genovese crime family gangsters, soldier Robert (Old Man) DeBello, 75, and mob associates Ryan (Baldy) Ellis, 35, Louis (Louie Sunoco) Romano, 39, and Fat Sal Delligatti, 41, who all face possible life sentences, are scheduled for trial in February.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Sources say that Spinelli, a drug abuser for many years, served as a messenger for the 82-year-old Amuso

Wow. Thats huge.
Equivalent to a high ranking member flipping, messenger. Surprised Amuso used an addict and a non member to courier mob business. Especially considering how well respected he was prior to his stint.

Bodes well for a fountain of top echelon info coming out at trial. 5 years a wire and messenger.

The Spinelli family has alot to be proud of. Attempted murder of a women, drug addiction, prison bathroom making ceremonies and now, one turns rat.

GL more interesting when its current.

Thanks for the post HB. Can you post the Franco picture?

[gohnjotti]

Sal Franco's done pretty well for himself considering he's been made since 1977, is a huge union guy and apparently hasn't spent a single day behind bars. Guy's filthy rich as well I hear. Other mobsters should follow his lead. Also, does anyone about his promotion to capo? I think it has happened in the last 6-7 months, anyone know about the crew, territory, etc?

[gohnjotti]

Sources say that Spinelli, a drug abuser for many years, served as a messenger for the 82-year-old Amuso

Wow. Thats huge.
Equivalent to a high ranking member flipping, messenger. Surprised Amuso used an addict and a non member to courier mob business. Especially considering how well respected he was prior to his stint.

Is Spinelli related in any way to Amuso? That's the only possible way I can figure a boss would use a drug-addled wannabe to relay messages.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Sources say that Spinelli, a drug abuser for many years, served as a messenger for the 82-year-old Amuso

Wow. Thats huge.
Equivalent to a high ranking member flipping, messenger. Surprised Amuso used an addict and a non member to courier mob business. Especially considering how well respected he was prior to his stint.

Is Spinelli related in any way to Amuso? That's the only possible way I can figure a boss would use a drug-addled wannabe to relay messages.

Good question. You'd assume that must be the reason, or similar, for that brilliant decision.

[richard_belding]

"May I burn like the piss and shit on this paper if I betray my friends"

[Hailbritain]

"May I burn like the piss and shit on this paper if I betray my friends"

[Pogo The Clown]

Never expected Robert Spinelli's name to ever pop up again. Especially not in something so big.

Also, does anyone about his promotion to capo? I think it has happened in the last 6-7 months, anyone know about the crew, territory, etc?

Probably happened earlier. He was helping his uncle (Joe Arcuri) run the crew for years. Under Arcuri it was pretty small, numbering only 4 made guys including Arcuri. They were based in Manhattan. Don't know about know. I imagine Joe Franco and Anthony Franco are 2 members of this crew.


Pogo

[AlexfromSouth]

Never expected Robert Spinelli's name to ever pop up again. Especially not in something so big.

Also, does anyone about his promotion to capo? I think it has happened in the last 6-7 months, anyone know about the crew, territory, etc?

Probably happened earlier. He was helping his uncle (Joe Arcuri) run the crew for years. Under Arcuri it was pretty small, numbering only 4 made guys including Arcuri. They were based in Manhattan. Don't know about know. I imagine Joe Franco and Anthony Franco are 2 members of this crew.


Pogo

[Pogo The Clown]

Alphonso Spitaleri was another member of the Arcuri-Franco Crew. He would be well into his 80s so don't know if he is still active. He may even be dead.


Pogo

[AlexfromSouth]

Never expected Robert Spinelli's name to ever pop up again. Especially not in something so big.

Also, does anyone about his promotion to capo? I think it has happened in the last 6-7 months, anyone know about the crew, territory, etc?

Probably happened earlier. He was helping his uncle (Joe Arcuri) run the crew for years. Under Arcuri it was pretty small, numbering only 4 made guys including Arcuri. They were based in Manhattan. Don't know about know. I imagine Joe Franco and Anthony Franco are 2 members of this crew.


Pogo

3 soldier crew? What fam put that rule up thst a crew must have at least 8 or 10 soldiers?

[Pogo The Clown]

Don't think that was ever a rule. Most Crews had many more than 8-10 members in the old days. In more recent times many crews have less.


Pogo

[AlexfromSouth]

Don't think that was ever a rule. Most Crews had many more than 8-10 members in the old days. In more recent times many crews have less.


Pogo

No I think that's what Vincent Cafaro said regarding the Genovese fam, 8 man crew at least. Read it online or something.

[Pogo The Clown]

Yeah I remember reading something like that. Don't think it was ever followed though.


Pogo

[bronx]

sal franco has a brother joe who is also made, a restaurant guy,never active took his button and sat at the bar and smoozed.the franco'
s and arcuri's go back to sicily together threw their fathers . been cosa nostra from the beginnings.they never really had any legal problem. tremendous run.....also had that union for over a half a century.